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Friday, August 28, 2009

Claim Jumper Shrimp Scampi

I've had good luck with Claim Jumper frozen entrees in the past, so I thought that they had pretty good odds at making a decent Shrimp Scampi.

I also thought I would grow up to be tall.

The Claim Jumper version contains linguini in a garlic butter sauce with shrimp and summer vegetables. The copy sounds nice...the reality is slightly different. The summer veggies are small and have that weird texture frozen veggies can get where they're a confusing mix of mushy and crunchy. The veggies consist of green beans -- which are the worst in terms of texture -- along with carrots, green and red peppers, and the smallest amount of broccoli possible for there to be broccoli at all. (Two miserable pieces, each the size of my pinky nail!)

Behold half the broccoli in the whole bloody portion!

As for the pasta: the sauce was very oily -- though I think that was supposed to be the butter -- and it actually does taste like butter, but in a fake popcorn topping sort of way. (Except that even bad popcorn is still kinda good). The sauce also tastes very garlicky. But there is no actual garlic to be found, and it again seems to be on the artificial side. But believe it or not, the pasta itself was cooked perfectly! Even for frozen pasta it was good. Too bad the sauce it was drowning in wasn't.

The shrimp? Don't even ask. Small, dry, flavorless, and very tough.

How did this meal go so wrong? It would have been a decent sized portion, had it been good enough to actually finish. (I tried to, but it just wasn't happening.) But really, even frozen "scampi" can't possibly be this hard to formulate.